Stanford continues its free fall

Mark Fainaru-Wada, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, November 2, 1997

STANFORD - No, that's not Mir floating past, that's just Stanford's little old football season spinning aimlessly through the night, powerless to stop the bleeding. Things have gotten downright ugly around these parts, which begs the question: Who do you like in the Big Game?

Yet again, another Cardinal humbling was the order of the day; a somewhat expected defeat, to be sure, but so unappealing as to make any guy in an ugly blazer think twice about inviting this team to his hometown.

It was a 27-7 beating at the hands of 12th-ranked UCLA, which stamped Tyrone Willingham with the first three-game losing streak of his Stanford stint, and which stretched UCLA's winning streak to seven games.

The Cardinal, well, they've kicked it into reverse and they can't seem to find a way out of their tailspin. They have three games remaining - at USC, at Washington State, home against Cal - and they need to win two of those three merely to qualify for a bowl game.

But, really, this quickly is becoming less and less a season about going bowling and more and more about keeping from falling completely apart.

"This is really hard for me to deal with," said fullback Jon Ritchie. "I'm not in a very solid emotional state right now, and I'm sure my teammates feel the same way."

This is not looking like last year, when the Cardinal went down to Los Angeles and beat UCLA, 21-20, to kick start a sagging season.

There was this lasting image of Saturday's game: Quarterback Chad Hutchinson, standing back in the shotgun, looking to his right as he called the signals and the ball suddenly sailing past his left ear. Center Blaine Maxfield made the untimely snap, and UCLA recovered the ball at the Stanford 44-yard line.

"I'm not going to lay the blame anywhere," Hutchinson said. "It's just a mistake that shouldn't have happened."

The Bruins managed only a field goal off the turnover - one of three by the Cardinal in the first half and four for the game, giving them 14 in the last three games - but by then it was 20-0.

Before that, and this should tell you a little something, it was not much more attractive for Stanford. For example, the game began with UCLA taking the opening kickoff and strolling 59 yards on just seven plays for a touchdown. Skip Hicks, who would carry 26 times for 121 yards and three touchdowns, scored from 4 yards out and Chris Sailer's extra point made it 7-0.

Stanford then went three plays and out, with Kevin Miller, the league's leading punter unleashing a . . . 21-yard shank. And so it went for the Cardinal.

Actually, the game turned in the weirdest way, with the Bruins leading 7-0 and facing a 4th-and-29 at their own 9-yard line. Sailer punted the ball and it rolled to a stop at the Stanford 43, where the Cardinal could make a run at a tie. But there was a penalty flag back at the line of scrimmage.

The call? You've heard this one before: Personal foul on Stanford's Donnie Spragan for not allowing the center one second before hitting him. Huh? The rule is in its second year.

"I thought I gave him enough time, but I guess I didn't give him enough time," said Spragan, who said Willingham brought in a referee last year to explain the new rule.

The upshot: 15 yards for UCLA and a first down. Three plays later, on 3rd-and-8, quarterback Cade McNown tossed an inside screen pass to Rodney Lee, who scampered 73 yards before being dragged down at the 1-yard line. Hicks did the rest, and the Bruins led 14-0.

"That was huge," Willingham said. "Not only did they score, it went against us in field position. We would have had the ball at, I think, our 45, and that would have given us a chance."

But, really, Stanford hardly seemed to have much of a chance. The offense never mounted much of a drive until it didn't matter, getting inside the UCLA 30 just once in the first three quarters.

In the first half, the running back tandem of Mike Mitchell and Anthony Bookman combined for two carries and minus-1 yard, until Mitchell's meaningless 9-yard gain at the end of the second quarter. Mitchell finished with 12 yards on five carries, Bookman 7 yards on five carries.

In the last three games, Mitchell has rushed for 67 yards - total - and Bookman 89. Whatever happened to those three straight games when they both rushed for more than 100 yards? Still wondering if Notre Dame is any good?

Like Arizona and Arizona State before it, UCLA shoved eight-man fronts at the Cardinal and dared them to pass. Simply, the Bruins, with their controlled-chaos defense, proved too much for Stanford.

Hutchinson was average, completing 18 of 36 passes for 197 yards, but he had one awful interception in the first half when he seemed to throw the ball up for grabs - and that was long before the end of the half, when he did just that and was punished with his second interception. Mostly, he was a man on the run, sacked six times and scrambling countless others.

Offensively, the Bruins weren't the juggernaut that came in averaging 42.3 points, but they did enough. Hicks was as advertised, his touchdown total reaching 20 for the season, and McNown seemed to find receivers whenever he needed to.&lt;

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